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LAPD investigates outside actor Ashton Kutcher’s Lake Hollywood residence in October after a text to 911 reported a home invasion robbery. It was a hoax.

Celebrities are no strangers to invasions of privacy, with paparazzi snapping endless photos and websites publishing detailed information about stars' homes, including their street addresses.

But there's a new prank in Hollywood, one that is causing major concerns for stars and law enforcement alike.

"Swatting is a very real problem for those in the public eye," said Blair Berk, a criminal lawyer who has represented stars, including Mel Gibson, Kanye West and Lindsay Lohan. "It is only a matter of time before someone dies because of this stupidity."

Justin Bieber and Simon Cowell are two of the latest high-profile victims of "swatting," a fast-growing phenomenon masterminded by anonymous mischief-makers who alert police to a bogus crime situation, prompting a tactical response — sometimes by SWAT officers — that involves a high-risk search for phantom assailants.

Several officers have already been injured responding to such calls, and officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, fear it's only a matter of time before events turn deadly.

Beck acknowledged that swatting has stretched the LAPD's emergency response capacity while endangering victims by placing them in potential confrontation with police firepower.

"It not only draws public safety resources away from real emergencies, it places people at significant risk by the dispatch of armed police officers," Beck said. "Our big fear is that [swatting] will become more prevalent."

In Bieber's case, someone inside a gated Calabasas mansion reported shots fired Oct. 10 and said the gunman was threatening residents, making clear he'd put police in his cross hairs when they showed up.

Unbeknown to sheriff's deputies, that mansion was Bieber's. Multiple squad cars were scrambled, and heavily armed deputies arrived. They swept Bieber's residence and two others on the street before discovering it was all a hoax. The pop star, on tour at the time, was nowhere near the mansion.

Chief Bill McSweeney of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department says the most sophisticated swatting maneuvers involve tricking caller ID so that a 911 call can be registered as having been placed from inside the very household being swatted.

Investigators say a 911 call reporting an armed home invasion that sent firefighters plus a dozen police officers swarming down on Miley Cyrus' unoccupied Studio City home in August may have originated from a cellphone, then bounced over several Internet providers to hide its origin. Bieber's swatting was called in through a device that allows hearing-impaired callers to send messages over the phone.

But even with the advanced software used by the LAPD, tracing spoofed calls or teletexts can be difficult.

"If these calls originate with a throwaway phone," McSweeney said, "sometimes those are hard to track."

No one has been prosecuted in any of the celebrity swatting cases, which also include incidents at the homes of Ashton Kutcher and Simon Cowell. But because of similarities in the Bieber, Cyrus and Kutcher incidents, police officials suspect the same person may have swatted the three stars.

Seeing as in my state the cops just beat a mentally-disabled janitor to death over a fake 911 "there's a robber in that 7-11!" phone call, I don't really have that much faith in law enforcement self-control.

I don't want to start wank with the many ONTD members who I'm sure know/are reasonable awesome cops, but imo that career often attracts a very specific personality type and education level, and combining that with the danger of the job itself = more opportunity for shit to go very wrong than right imo, unless you're part of a very specific (white, not poor, healthy) demographic.

This tired ass argument. A very specific personality type? You mean like someone who values helping others and justice?

My dad is a cop and almost died trying to catch an armed robber when I was two years old. The guy purposely hit him with his car. He was in the hospital while my brother was born. He also watched his partner get shot and killed while serving a warrant. He had a baby die in his arms after a parent beat it to death. He saved multiple peoples lives in his 30 yr career yet most of his job was spent listening to people yell at him or bitch him out because THEY violated the law. Nobody fucking appreciates police officers anymore, its always this FUCK THE POLICE LOL bullshit.

I've never met one of these mythical evil cops that everyone talks about. I know they exist but there are bad people in EVERY profession. The media just doesn't report about BAD INSURANCE AGENTS ~* like they would report about a bad cop, which makes sense but most cops care about people.

And before anyone is like "lol u mad" - YEAH I AM. I don't understand why there is always this hatred against cops and it makes no sense, military service members don't get any of it. They perform similar jobs but if someone said the same things about a Marine or something everyone would lose their shit. Maybe its bc military members don't hand out speeding tickets.

Uhm what is your closing paragraph, especially within the context of the comment directly above yours?

I said I wasn't wanting to start wank, but since you brought all that and more with your own anecdata here's my own: I lived in my parents' rather wealthy rural neighborhood next door to a police chief for 5 years, during which time he proved himself to be an arrogant, small-minded, power-tripping creep - he would bring his cop friends home and drink until late and then harass the neighbors (and I mean literally, they would stake out a certain neighbor's driveway and talk loudly about all the violence/damage they could do if he dared show his face), and he once literally took a knife to his daughter's inflatable wading pool while she and my sister were inside it because he decided they shouldn't be in it at that moment. I mentioned this was a rather wealthy neighborhood earlier for context, because there was a homeowner's association and he would deliberately violate the rules (he built a randomass chicken coop and painted it traffic cone orange just to violate the charter/piss people off, for example).

Let's see, other cops in my past - I went to school with someone also in the police academy and he was every kind of ignorant, patronizing douchebag. "This is America, speak English" was literally a sticker he had on his laptop.

And just a couple months ago this happened. Of course the city isn't doing shit to punish them for using their status to threaten and humiliate some random parent at a ball game.

And then there's the cop who came to my high school to lecture the female students about "self defense" AKA "not dressing like you want to be raped, because there's always someone willing to take you up on that!"

So again, like I said in my original comment - obviously there are a lot of just your father's kind of amazing, principled cops out there. But my observations are just as valid as yours, and imo there are definitely a more-than-fair share of power-tripping, stereotype-buying tools. "Valuing justice" can translate a lot of the time to "valuing being RIGHT and making everyone else do things THEIR WAY" in my experience.

How can you say you're not trying to start wank when you insult a very large group of people AND their families? Do you know how many times I've had to hear this shit? Do you know how many times my father has had to hear this shit? I'm tired of it.

Sis, I'm really NOT trying to start wank - I am, however, trying to state my opinions and experiences in a clear, sympathetic way and without making broad, unsupported generalizations. The fact that what I posted wasn't something you liked or wanted to hear about doesn't make it automatically wanky.

My experiences and the conclusions I've drawn based on those experiences are valid. I'm sorry you feel hurt by my expressing them, but I have every right to, and tbh I think it really says more about you than me that you're reacting in this way, first by accusing me of flat-out lying/buying into random Hollywood generalizations (debatable btw, even the "dirty cop" movies come stocked full of principled heroes) with no basis on reality, and now by accusing me of deliberately seeking to personally insult all cops and their families.

The ramifications of a shitty cashier with a register is less than a shitty cop with a gun, don't be cute.

And look up the statistics for the way minorities, rape victims and disabled people are treated by police, compared to white, male wealthy individuals. People are are not pulling it out of their ass. Drive while black/latino in a nice car, and get back to me. It being acceptable on any level to shoot a black man the morning of his wedding, when he held no gun IS A HUGE FUCKING ISSUE in police culture, that can't be swept up the rug because your dad was the Good Cop. Your anecedata means nothing, in this instance, no matter how perfect a cop I'm sure your father was.

There's something wrong with the way police are trained, and the overly aggressive way they are allowed to act to the non-white public populace when stuff like this keeps happening.

I agree with everything you are saying sans the last paragraph (don't have any knowledge of how military members are treated). They are always damned if they do - damned if they don't. It is a thankless job and I'm surprised people actually want to do it for a living.